Marxism as Symptom, Problem, Question

Thinking with Chris Cutrone's challenge after the Death of the Millennial Left

Yesterday I released the opening of a Real Talk session from The Portal with Marxist theorist Chris Cutrone. This session was aimed and oriented around thinking “Society for Marxism, Today and Tomorrow”, featuring an open reflection from Chris Cutrone on Marxism as symptom, problem, question. You can check it out here:

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This framing will be extremely inspirational for myself in teaching the Early Marx 101 course, which starts June 9th at Philosophy Portal. The Early Marx 101 course will offer 7 lectures inspired by the writings of Marx from the 1840s, as well as give you access to several sessions in The Portal oriented and orbiting questions of Marxism, socialism, and communism, including recordings with Chris Cutrone, Revol Press, Michel Bauwens, and more to be announced soon. To learn more or get involved, check the link below:

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I am attracted to work of Marxist theorist Chris Cutrone because his work, both The Death of the Millennial Left, as well as Marxism and Politics, speaks directly to me as a kind of archetype of a Millennial Leftist. When I was coming into my own intellectual and political consciousness, the idea that the Millennial generation could participate in a political project orbiting democratic socialism, seemed plausible to me. Millennial Leftist politics started to flirt with Marxist theory, in attempting to think the dialectics of capitalism and socialism, but ultimately unravelled in-itself, probably reaching its climactic failure or implosion in on itself, in 2016 (Trump’s first election). This moment also broadly coincided with the rise of counter-cultural right wing psychologist Jordan B. Peterson into great prominence and influence.

During this time, I withdrew from any active political engagement in thought or action, largely inspired by philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s assertion that now was the time for thinking, not acting. Here we find an important methodological inversion of the standard linear philosophical narrative from “Hegel to Marx”, in the question: “what would Hegel say to Marx?” Philosophy Portal’s work is in fact a result of this starting point. Cutrone’s stance, although not identical, takes a similar approach insofar as he is questioning Marxist assumptions, standard ways of understanding Marxist theory-praxis, and forcing us to go even deeper into reflecting on how we might be blinded and misled in our assumptions about what is possible, and ultimately, “what is to be done”. This line of questioning seems essential, both for me personally and more broadly, in the sense that I still find myself working within capitalism, and in that sense, re-engendering bourgeois social relations, and also navigating the unfolding of new industrial revolutions (algorithms, artificial intelligence, etc.) which point towards the need for some qualitatively different form of politics.

In this context, Cutrone asks us: what is the criterion of plausibility for Marxism? What makes it plausible? Why did Marx and Engels think the thoughts that they did? Why did it catch on as a mass movement? Why did it become such a powerful ideology? Why are we still haunted by it? For Cutrone, there must be some contradictory relation here between social being and consciousness, that as long as we live in a society dominated by capitalism, we will be haunted by Marxism; because in capitalism, we attempt to socially regenerate bourgeois relations, and therefore aspire for the freedoms engendered by those relations. This is very practical from the point of view of any of us attempting to build a different way of life, an “other life”, in the para-academic network, because the modes of industrial production we use to build this “other life”, present us with the contradictions that will undermine our attempt to stabilise our bourgeois social relations (re: attentionalism of screen dynamics to maximise profit vs. actual life-long partnerships, friendships, commitments).

Today, we do not live in a society where Marxism is perceived as plausible, far from it. Cutrone notes that the radical right will see Marxism as an even worse version of bourgeois society and capitalism than the one we already inhabit, and will imagine that American society is under threat/siege from Marxist influence. In other worse, for Cutrone, they associate the dystopian character of contemporary capitalism with the threat of Marxism. On the other side, the radical left, tries to go beyond Marxism, in a type of “post-” “anti-”, or “non-” Marxism which can end up becoming a form of “sub-” Marxism, even if its aspirational character still strives for freedom from capitalism. In this sense, for Cutrone, he sees Marxism in 2025 as a symptom, not a solution or answer, but a problem and a question. This “symptom Marxism” may have some philosophical influence, but there is no coherent theory or real practice today, for Cutrone, that could be considered Marxist.

Can Marxism in this context still play a role in a potential “resurrection” or “rebirth” of the Millennial Left? For Cutrone, Millennials are burned out from becoming jacked up on socialist ideas. However, even if they had considered or flirted with Marxism as a theory and practice, they ultimately ended up becoming irrelevant in striving for some progressive capitalist reforms (for Cutrone: Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Bernie Sanders, etc.). Cutrone states that it is not that the goals of the DSA or Sanders are implausible or impossible, but rathe that there is no political will for their goals internal to capitalist politics, and thus socialists should not waste their time trying to implement something that is politically undesirable on the terms of capitalist politics. This is in any case what Cutrone’s “Old Fashioned Marxism”, would forbid as a “viable path” towards “building a socialist movement”.

In this context, Cutrone states that any potential “resurrection/rebirth” would involve questioning assumptions more basic than Marxism. He cites Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, G.W.F. Hegel. He thinks this on the basis of his teaching to the Millennial Left, who he states found the early bourgeois thinkers more plausible than Marx and Marxism. Whereas Marxism was unclear, the early bourgeois thinkers were clear. The reason for this discrepancy? Cutrone suggests it is because Marx and Marxism involve a “missing object”: an actual proletarian socialist movement in society that is bound up in the development of capitalism for our time. In this sense, bourgeois thought is more compelling. What this means is that, perhaps the direction that Philosophy Portal has taken, that is laying down a theoretical foundation with Hegel, might be the necessary precursor at our moment, before thinking through again the core of why Marx became the “Early Marx” (differentiating himself from the Young Hegelian milieu of his day).

This way of thinking and framing will be with us throughout the rest of the year, as we dive into the texts of the “Early Marx”. If this sounds like a compelling and necessary direction, join us:

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